A team of Chinese and American researchers has developed a high-performance cathode from an organic polymer. It is mainly suited for use in future sodium-ion batteries.
Advanced polymeric pyrazine-based cathodes are suitable for rechargeable batteries that use sodium-ion technology.
Wiley-VCH
In future, lithium batteries could be replaced by batteries that use sodium-ion technology. However, in order for this to happen, it first requires stable electrode materials. A research team has now developed an organic polymeric cathode that displays a high capacity at fast charge and discharge rates. This cathode shows a higher short-term and long-term capacity for the sodium-ion than other polymeric or inorganic cathode materials.
Chunsheng Wang from the University of Maryland, USA, and an international team of scientists chose the organic compound hexaazatrinaphthalene (HATN) as a cathode material. They stabilised the material's structure by introducing linkages between the individual molecules. This produced an organic polymer named polymeric HATN, or PHATN. The PHATN cathode was tested in metal-ion batteries, using a highly-concentrated electrolyte. The sodium-ion battery was operated at 3.5 V and, according to the scientists, maintained a capacity of more than 100 mAh per gram, even after 50,000 charging and discharging cycles.